I'd like to see much more understanding of emotional issues around hurt, abandonment, disappointment, longing, failure and shame, where they stem from and how they drive people and policies brought into public discourse.

When I was growing up, one or two girls were beautiful, but it was not an aspiration, right?

I wish we could treat our bodies as the place we live from, rather than regard it as a place to be worked on, as though it were a disagreeable old kitchen in need of renovation and update.

Fat is a social disease, and fat is a feminist issue.

Public intellectuals come from a range of areas and use their expertise to comment more widely than just their field. They want to make a contribution to public space, and they stick their necks out to do it.

Fat people are so rarely included in visual culture that fat is perceived as a blot on the landscape of sleek and slim.

We accept there's an emotional aspect to life. But we're not very developed in our ways of understanding it.